


The Hound of Brooklyn

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Black Dog, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7891030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah has seen hounds before, bounding over the hills after their lords. Never a hound like Steve's, though, with coal-dust freckles on his face and sulfuric fire in his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hound of Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> yetanotherobsessivereader asked for a Black Dog fic, and how could I ever turn down the supernatural?

Sarah first saw the hound when Steven was five, both of them on the bus and her child headed for yet another trip to the hospital, where Sarah’s friend Dr. McNabb would treat him for free.

“Look, Ma,” her son said, the words slurred with fever and exhaustion from a cough that wouldn’t let him sleep. “There’s my doggy.” He peered, bleary-eyed, through the condensation on the bus window and waved into the early winter night, wide blue eyes yellowed with illness.

Steve had been delirious for hours, and Sarah could taste fear in her throat like bile, couldn’t swallow without gagging on the pallor of her child’s face, the last doctor’s suggestion that she “enjoy the time you get with him, Sarah. It’s a miracle he’s living at all.”

She plastered on a smile and stared out the window as they crossed Atlantic Ave, prepared to nod and play along.

The hound was darker than the night. Its fur was black as pitch, pulling in the light from the streetlamps and reflecting none back, an inky chasm in the midst of a bustling street. Even sitting on its haunches it could have come up to Sarah’s waist, with a jaw large enough to fit her head inside. A jaw that snapped closed on the strings of men’s fate and carried them down to hell.

The hound tilted its head, and there were freckles like coal dust against its pale cheeks, a little boy sitting cross-legged at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Its face was wan, a perfect match for her son’s sickly pale skin, its dark locks the counterpart to Steven’s golden, sweat-damp hair. It waved back at Steve, staring into the bus with eyes that flared like embers in the dark.

Sarah crossed herself. She dragged her son away from the window, wrapping him into her thin coat and muttering the Lord’s Prayer aloud even after they made it through the hospital doors. No one who saw a Cú Sídhe lived, she knew, but Sarah would fight Death himself for her son.

 

The second time Sarah saw the hound, Steve was twelve, and had long ago informed her that he had a dog named Bucky. Sarah had never known a story where the victim _named_ the beast that would carry him to hell, but she lit more candles after mass just in case.

The hound had grown far past the size of the wolfhounds Sarah recalled as a child, baying over the hills and scaring her out of a sound sleep and into her older sister’s arms. It rested its charcoal head on Steven’s sick bed, nosing at her son’s palm.

Steve had caught rheumatic fever three days before, and Sarah hadn’t slept a wink since.

Steve didn’t even feel the press of an otherworldly muzzle, limbs jerking with spasms, head tossing and temperature far too high.

The hound licked at Steve’s twitching fingers, and Sarah could smell the sulfur on its breath. She grabbed at its ruff, hauling backwards and shifting the Cú Sídhe into a chair, a pile of bone-white limbs and hellfire eyes.

It had a face on the cusp of adolescence, cheeks hollowed and sooty eyelashes stark against skin the color of ice floating on the northern sea. It watched her without blinking, folded awkwardly into the old wooden chair, flames curling through its eyes and searing Sarah’s skin.

“Don’t take my son,” she demanded, her voice cracking on the plea. The hound - _Bucky_ – cocked its head and stared, mouth open and teeth glinting sharply in the weak electric light, brimstone on its tongue. “It’s not his time. It’s _not_ his time.”

It was the cry of a hound that wrenched Sarah awake just past midnight, the tremors of a nightmare still shivering through her skin. She reached out automatically, pressing her wrist to Steven’s face, testing his temperature before she even opened her eyes.

His skin was sweaty but not radiating heat, warm but not feverish. The Cú Sídhe was gone, and her son was still here.

 

The last time Sarah saw Bucky, Steve was nineteen, screaming bloody murder at the hound resting its snout on Sarah’s bed. She stretched out her fingers, too weak to do more, and brushed the sharp, onyx whiskers along his muzzle, curled a lock of the hound’s dark hair behind his reddened ears and managed a small smile for the Cú Sídhe, who blinked at her and pressed his young face into her dry palm.

“Go away!” Steve shrieked, skinny arms around the hound’s neck and failing to drag either of them an inch away from Sarah’s deathbed. “Bucky, you can’t do this! You _can’t_!”

The hound whimpered, a sheen like a gasoline spill in his fiery eyes. “Shh,” Sarah whispered, two wan young men peering up at her from their tangle on the hospital floor. “’S all right,” she tried to console them, the hound snuffling grave dust and fear into her limp hand, her son choking on snot and tears, his face buried against her shoulder as though he were still a little boy.

He was still her little boy, and Sarah dragged her free hand up to rest in his golden hair, didn’t have the energy to rub her fingers against his scalp and sing him to sleep, to stand guard and keep him safe from harm. But that was all right, now. Cú Sídhe might breathe hellfire and herald death, but they were still hounds, and Sarah had never seen one so loyal as Steve’s.

“I love you,” she told Steve, but he was weeping too loudly to hear, and Sarah’s voice was no more than a breath she couldn’t reach. “It’s all right,” she told the hound, trying to quiet its mournful cries, and her voice came easier, rose from her chest and not out of her still lungs. “You’ll keep him safe, won’t you?” she asked, chucking her fingers against Bucky’s chin to force him to meet her eyes, because she might know the answer, but she needed the oath.

The hound rose up to its full height, a shadow of death larger than a horse, darkness radiating from it like thunder, its teeth the sharp flash of lightning in a storm. Its eyes flashed, the first flame of a torch thrown through an Englishman’s window in the night, its breath like gunpowder and frost. The Cú Sídhe tilted its head back and howled, raising the hair on men’s necks as they lay sleeping and miles away, the sound enough to stop a person’s heart.

Sarah smiled. “That’s fine, then,” she said, patting the bed until Bucky stood on her other side, his bony hand squeezing hers too tightly, hackles up and whimpering loud enough to keep the unknowing doctors away.

She kept the other hand on her son’s head, though he wouldn’t know. Then Sarah closed her eyes, and let the mournful baying of the hound lull her to sleep.


End file.
